


Play Doctor

by apollos



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Enthusiastic Consent, F/M, Falling In Love, First Time, Medical Kink, PWP, Porn with Feelings, Virginity Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 23:22:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19386538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollos/pseuds/apollos
Summary: Silna asks Harry to show her what he does under the guise of working on his dictionary.





	Play Doctor

**Author's Note:**

> wanted this to be a quick hot little pwp about exploring/worshiping bodies and also write some porn from silna's point of view but it turned into this emotional mess instead ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

As a shaman's daughter—and more than that, only child—Silna knew from early on that she will not lead the life she has seen the other women she knows lead. She will not have a partner nor children; she will not see much beyond the open ice, learn much beyond the stories and traditions of her people, know much beyond her duty. She has therefore not had any need to learn the way men and women relate to one another in any intimate sense. Even beyond their language and societal barriers, though, Silna can see—feel—the burgeoning intimacy between herself and one Mr. Harry Goodsir.

At first, she thought it was just his kindness and his sincerity that made her look forward to his visits. Then the men started giving her gifts that were no doubt kind and sincere, but in their own way, a way alienating and unwelcome. Then Harry found his way into her mind's eye when she was alone, or when she was asleep, and that is when she knew. She started to watch him for signs, as well, and though she has no other women aboard the ship to observe his interaction with, he behaves differently with her than with any of her guards. Long looks, held between them as if their gaze is something physical; the lightest of fluttering of fingers, like a seabird's feathers rippling in their flight; a stumbling of his words if they may have the slightest hint of a double meaning. Whenever she catches it, she cannot help but proffer him a small smile. He is—cute. Like an infant on its mother's back, or a small seal playing in the waters. Yet also he is as handsome as the most desirable of men, in the set of his brow with his head turned away from her in thought. He inspires feelings in her that she thought she would never have any use for, and therefore resigned herself to never feeling.

Silna devises a plan. One rooted in an appeal to his academic curiosity, that little light she has identified behind his eyes, the thing that makes him live—his soul, maybe. One that fits nicely with his little project of decoding her language. Practical and useful.

He arrives in the evening. Though the lighting remains constant with the lamps in the belly of the ship, Silna likes to imagine that the shadows are a little longer, the men a little slower. Harry himself is indeed a little later than usual, apology written on his face and lacing his words as he slips into her cellar.

"One of the men was feeling unwell," he says as he takes his seat across from her, on the cushion they now leave for him. "Sometimes, what they need more then any medicine, is somebody to be there with them."

Silna must stop herself from smiling inappropriately; though she aches for these sick men, and for Harry for caring for them, this turn of events suits her plan perfectly. "I want to know what your role is," she says.

Harry's eyebrows crinkle, his head tilting, signs of confusion. "You know what I do," he responds. "I help the doctors. I fix men's bodies."

"Yes," Silna says. "I do know that. But I want to  _see_ ," she says.

Harry shakes his head. "It wouldn't be proper," he says, "for a lady, and—these men, they are quite sick—I don't want you to see that, or worse, fall ill yourself."

"No,  _no_ , Harry." Silna scoots forward and then gestures at her own body. "Show me what you know about the body."

"Ah?" Harry says. His wide eyes so endear Silna, she has come to realize, beyond that curious little light behind them. "I cannot—Silna, you are a woman, and I am a man, and this is a ship—"

Silna does laugh, then. She peers around behind Harry, though she knows there's nobody beyond the closed curtain. It's too late, and as far as she can tell they've given Harry full discretion, under the belief she has been feeding him information about Tuunbaq. And she will, one day. Not today, and she wants those awful thoughts gone. In her silence, she knows Harry will read her thoughts instead: whatever customs the English may hold, surely have no holding themselves while mired in the ice of her land.

"We cannot."

"It will help with your dictionary," she says, sounding the word  _dictionary_ out in English. "You touch a part of my body and tell me the word in your language. Then I tell you in mine."

"We can do that without touching," Harry says, "as we have been—"

Silna gives him another of her small smiles. "I want you to touch me," she says. "I want to touch you, also."

"I do like you," Harry says. The space is so small, their knees touch by necessity. He seems to have become aware of that and draws them to his chest, sitting like a child. "But, I—I would like to do things properly, you see—in England, we have courtships rituals. It would be lovely. We would go on walks and eat meals, with my family. Yes, I would like that very much, Silna. But not this."

"I like you, Harry," Silna echoes. She reaches forward and takes his hands in hers. "This is not England."

"Well, technically, aboard the ship, it is, in a way."

"It will never be England," Silna implores. She looks into Harry's eyes. She does not have to hope; she knows he will understand what she's trying to say. "We should not make each other sad like this. We should be happy while we can."

"I  _am_ happy when I am with you." Harry squeezes her hands. His face has become red, his knees locked together. "That is why I want to treat you properly."

" _Proper_ ," Silna repeats, once more in English. She knows what that word means; they use it enough. She injects her tone with detriment. "What good is your  _proper_ here?"

"I have to," Harry says, his voice thick. "I have to try and live, right—I have to try and do right."

"This  _is_  right." Silna squeezes his hands. "You and me."

"Yes."

"I want you to know," Silna continues. "I want you to know my body. Not for your dictionary. For you. Just mine, my body, only for you."

Harry makes a sound that is not quite a laugh, but an abbreviated version, crossed with perhaps a swallow. She sees the bump on his throat move. The little bones and muscles in his hands, the ones he has studied and knows all the names for, their functions, their importance, move beneath her fingers. They are not wearing gloves; the room is kept warm by the ship's heating system, he has explained, and also by their own body heat, their shared breath and bodies in such a small space. Cozy and comfortable, like the shelters she had shared with her father in another time, her mother in an even more distant one. Family.

"Are we family, Harry?" she asks him, drawing her body up towards his and leaning her weight on his knees. "Could we be, one day?"

"If we were to marry," Harry says, his voice thick. "If you would like that."

"I think I would."

"You would have to come with us," Harry says. "Off the ice. To England."

Silna sighs, loosening her hold on his hands so that she may drape herself across his knees more fully. He remains still beneath her.

"I know you wouldn't like  _that_ ," Harry says. He raises a hand to rest, very lightly, on her back, between her shoulders.

"This is too sad." Silna lifts her head and holds his gaze. "Please, Harry. I don't want to be sad. I don't want you to be sad." This had not been her plan, this heaviness, this awareness of their situation. "We have each other," she whispers, averting her eyes. Like her days with her father, that companionship, but different, as well. She accepted that one day she would leave her father, acknowledged that it might even have indeed happened like this, in the worst possible of ways. She never wants to leave Harry. She wants to make it work, somehow. Whether she teachers him to hunt seal or he laces her up in those awful clothes the English women wear. She wants, more desperately than anything she has ever wanted, to forge a future together, whether it be through her ice or across his ocean.

"Silna," he says, and she has never heard her name sound so beautiful, in his bizarre and heady tongue. "I—"

"I know, Harry."

"Lay down," Harry says gently, nudging her off his knees. "On the bed, on your back. I will—I will show you how I learned on the bodies, at first."

She smiles and tries to clear the weighty emotions of the previous moments from her mind as she settles back on her bed. She laces her fingers over her stomach, her toes pointed upwards, as if she were about to sleep. He folds his legs down and then props up on his knees, still sitting a small distance away from the bed, so that he must fold his upper body to reach his arms to her. His hands float, trembling ever so slightly, the pale skin catching the lamplight. It is dreamlike, ethereal, like streams of a dying sun dancing on the ice.

"I'm ready," she says, with a bit of impatience.

Harry takes a deep breath and then brings his hands to her head. She reaches up to undo the braids, so that her hair may fall, spilling onto her pillow. Their skin brushes, just slightly, in their twin movements. Then his fingers slide between the unbound strands, his fingernails brushing over the sensitive skin it hides. Her skin now prickles with happiness. "This is—hair. Beneath, it, this skin?" he curls his fingers inwards, a curious gesture that Silna feels as if it happened between her legs, more than on top of her head. She becomes aware of a heat there, in that shadowed convex, a heat that had been building for the past few minutes, since they began to talk of what they were to do. "This is the scalp."

"I like this," Silna says. She juts her head against Harry's touch and closes her eyes.

"We could do just this," Harry says, his voice quiet. He scratches her head again.

"No," Silna says, smiling. "Next, please."

His fingers trickle downwards, trailing across her forehead and then her eyebrows. "Forehead. Eyebrows. Eyelids." The lightest touch, tickling her, as he moves down her face. Finally, his fingers touch her lips, in the loose possible sense of  _touch_ , just the pads touching only the chapped parts of Silna's mouth that raise slightly above the rest. "Lips."

" _Touch_ , please," Silna insists. "As a doctor."

"It's just—" Harry stutters. Silna opens her eyes and turns her head. With Harry kneeling beside her, his hands hovering above her body, and the angle of his arms makes it difficult to see his face. She can feel the heat rolling off of him, though, a wet, heavy heat. "This is a sort of—intimate, I suppose, body part. In your culture, do you—touch lips, as a sign of affection?"

Silna shakes her head.

"How about—" Harry clears his throat, and then adopts a more disaffected tone, though his voice remains shaky. "In a more—intimate sense? Between a man and a woman?"

"I wouldn't know," Silna says. Her mouth quirks.

"Of course," Harry mumbles. He breathes. Silna watches the rise and fall of his chest. "Well, then. A doctor would not do this. And thus." He touches her chin, then drags his fingers along her jaw. "Chin. Jaw. These are important, to the structure of the face."

"Mmm." Silna lets her eyes close again, enjoying the slightly increased pressure of his touch. She relaxes, sinking into his hands, until he presses his thumb into the hollow of her throat. As if he had just touched a visible knot of her soul, she feels it through her whole body, barely hearing as he mutters the word  _throat_.

"Again," she instructs, grabbing his wrist when he goes to touch one of her ears.

"Oh," Harry says, a small exhalation. "Oh, Silna. The throat can be—touching it can be. Exciting. For some. It is a very sensitive spot."

"Can I touch yours?" Silna asks, staring at the thin line of smooth skin exposed between the cloth he wears around his neck and his beard.

"Later," Harry says. With his arms lower, she can see his face. His eyes are dark, his lids lower than usual. "You wanted me to show you what I do. A patient does not touch a surgeon."

"Ah." She grins.

He presses two fingers into a different area of her throat, and though it doesn't feel as immediately good, the shock of that amplified pressure rolls through her lower belly. "This is your pulse," Harry says. "I can feel your heart beating, here. It lets me know you are alive. Currently—it's a bit faster than normal."

"Yes," Silna says; yes, she knew that, and yes, this feels good.

He leaves his fingers there and grabs one of her wrists with his other hand, pressing another two fingers into the little dip there. Just these two points of contacts, her neck and her wrist, have shared that wet heat with her, so that she feels it as if it were a physical connection between the two of them. "This is another pulse point," Harry says.

"Next.". If he continues going from the top down, what is coming is obvious. She doesn't know why, exactly, but she knows she aches to be touched on her breasts, can feel her nipples having tightened into two little begging beacons beneath her tunic.

"Shoulders," Harry says instead, holding both palms of his large hands over the balls of her shoulders beneath her clothes. "Upper arm, the brachium. The bone here is the humerus."

"You delay," she says.

"I am showing you what I do," Harry repeats. His voice sounds strained; his fingers flex, as if by their own intention, and close over Silna's shoulders. She has not realized until this moment how  _long_ they are, how they are able to engulf her even over her heavy tunic. It is a poor proxy for what she wants; what she knows Harry wants.

"Next," she says again.

"Silna," Harry begs. "Please—I've shown you enough—we must stop." He lets go of her shoulders and leans forward. Silna opens her eyes and props herself up on her elbows, staring at him openly. His bent posture is most curious; she can see the line of his shoulders shake, the visible evidence of his thinning composure. He looks almost as if he is praying. She loves it, she realizes, making him tremble like this.

"Let me hold you," she says.

He lifts his head and opens his mouth, breathing. "If you touch me, I will fall apart."

"Touch me, then?" Silna asks. She grabs one of Harry's hands, planted on the floor. "Here. Next." She lifts his hand to her breast, arching her back upward, and presses it there. His eyes flare open as he tries to pull back, and then his eyes slide shut as he gives in and squeezes. The feeling mirrors itself between her legs; Silna bites down on her lip, trying not to moan. She watches as Harry seems to do the same, sucking one of his bottom lips between his teeth.

"Harry?" she asks, shocked to hear that her own voice sounds a little breathy, too. "Harry, what is this?"

"B-breast," Harry says, releasing his lip. It looks swollen and red; Silna wants to suck it between her own teeth. "Mammary. For fuh-feeding children, yes, but also—sexual pleasure." Just saying the words seem to wreck him, his free hand twitching. Noticing this, Silna grabs it and brings it to her free breast.

"You treat people with clothes on?" she asks.

"If I can avoid removing them," Harry says, dragging the answer deep from somewhere inside him. "Not—in studying anatomy, no—it is the body, not the clothes which cover it."

In the silence and their ridiculous posture, motionless with Harry's hands on her clothed breasts, both their breath audible and boiling in the stale air, Silna throbbing between her legs in a way that has only been hinted at before, Silna can hear that nobody is outside the curtain. She shifts her body upwards, then lets go of Harry's hands as she reaches down to the bottom of her tunic. Harry goes to stop her, but in the flying of limbs, she manages to pull it off swiftly. She hears Harry exhale and mutter, "Oh, Lord in Heaven above."

"Is this good?" Silna asks. She wants this, and she wants Harry to want this—but she doesn't want this if he doesn't want this. She feels no self-consciousness, nor desire to cover up; instead, she places her elbows behind her once again, so that he may see her chest in full, her breasts and nipples puckered with desire, tight on her chest, skin lonely.

"We are not in England," Harry murmurs. He sits back on his haunches, and Silna observes the bulge between his pants, wonders how long it's been there. She has watched him become increasingly more unwound, and now watches as he loosens the tie at his neck and then takes it off altogether, throwing it aside. His fingers undo a few buttons, his mouth open and breath panting, and then he leans forward once more, shifting his legs around beneath him. "I need you to know," he says, his face now close to hers, "that I love you. I have loved you for quite a while. This is the best part of my day, being with you, and of course I want to  _be_ with you, but I just wanted to do things  _right_ , but if we can never do things  _right,_ then, I suppose—if you are content with this, also—"

She reaches up and kisses him, grabbing around at the back of his hair and then throwing another arm across his shoulders. She doesn't know how to kiss, really, and her teeth snag on his lips as they both open their mouths and their tongues start to slide together, hungry but inefficient, saliva dripping and trapped between their chins. She holds onto him as tightly as she can, pulling him on top of her. He scrambles, his nose bumping against hers as he pulls back for breath and then one of his hands finds one of her breasts, his fingers pinching a nipple. So expertly, surprising her—but, she supposes, when two people are very hungry for the same thing, propriety does eventually disappear.

This happens in a flash, like the lightning of a storm, and Silna nearly loses herself to it, also. She remembers their game when Harry touches her stomach with the hand that had been at her breasts and leverages her weight to move him off her again. He follows suit immediately, crushing himself against the wall; she smiles at his willingness to follow her command.

"What is that?" she asks, gesturing to Harry's hand on her stomach.

"Oh—oh, yes." Harry clears his throat again. Unwilling to stop touching him, even for the sake of the game, Silna keeps a hand in his hair, scratching at his scalp as he had done at hers. His face flushes an even deeper red, the color crawling down into his throat. Silna touches his neck next as he stutters through the words he has for this part of her body. "Stomach. Abdomen. Inside here, organs—the spleen, liver, appendix, intestines—"

"Lower," Silna says. She touches Harry's chest through his clothes. His hand moves slightly lower on her stomach, to the waist of her pants, and then stills. "Take this off, please?" she asks, tugging on Harry's shirt.

"I—okay," Harry says. He takes both his shaking hands and unbuttons all of his layers. Silna watches, waiting for the reveal of his skin, and while she does she pushes her pants down. Aware that there  _is_ a possibility they could be caught, she leaves them around her knees, at present uninterested in anything Harry might have to say about any body part of hers lower than her thighs. It would be nice, to feel his hands wrap around the muscles of her lower legs; but later, later, because now all she wants is to feel his touch, light or hard, on her hot, tight wetness. She grabs at her own breasts while she watches Harry unbutton her shirt, wanting to be touched, yes, but wanting it to be Harry, only Harry, that touches her, eventually, finally,  _there_.

"Oh!" she exclaims when she sees his chest and stomach: the skin there is smooth and a shade lighter than his face, but also covered by coarse, dark hair. She lets go of one of her breasts and moves her fingers through the hair, twisting It clumps around his chest, then thins as it runs down lower, into the waist of his pants. She follows the line with her hands and her eyes. He leans into her touch, grabbing her other hand in both of his and bending his head into her palm. His eyes remain open, on her exposed sex, but he seems to have lost his words, his lips slightly parted, tongue peeking out, warm, damp breath leaking against her fingers.

"This feels good for men, too?" she asks as she finds one of his nipples and squeezes it.

"Yes," Harry moans. "It feels very good."

"Mmm." Silna follows the line of hair back down, and then she brushes her fingers against the bulge in his pants. Harry swallows; she feels against her other palm. "And this, now?"

"Different," Harry chokes out. "For men and women—the key difference—"

"They are?" Silna prompts. She grabs ahold at the bulge, delighting in how solid it feels, even through all their clothes. She knows this, of course, but she enjoys seeing Harry try to retain his grip on his composure and professionalism, battling it out with his obvious arousal, too much to quit their game. "Touch me. Show me. Tell me."

Harry nuzzles into her touch for a moment and then, almost sleepily, lifts his head. He readjusts himself and places his knees on either side of Silna, leaning some of his weight back on her calves. With his head still bowed and hair in his eyes, he places those large hands on both of Silna's thighs. "Between the thighs," he begins, his voice shaky but still confident in his words, "on the woman, is the vagina. There are different parts."

"Show me," Silna whispers.

With just the tip of one finger, he touches the flat skin, specked with hair, between her stomach and her openings. "This is the pubis," he says.

"Lower." Silna keeps her eyes open, wanting to see Harry's shaking lips, the way the bulge in his pants bobs, as if itself sentient, as he shifts and adjusts.

"At the top is the clitoris. Ah—clit, for short. But that is a vulgar term."

Silna gasps when his fingers brush over that spot, a torment of a light touch. She grabs his wrists and presses him closer to her, bucking up into his hand, wanting to live forever in the strike she feels when that right pressure is reached. Harry's hands are so gentle and yet so rough, the skin there callused, and she has nothing to compare this sensation to, no point of reference—she feels as if her body has been drenched in snow, removing all her senses, except instead of feeling cold all she feels is  _good_.

'This is the source of female pleasure," Harry says, sounding as if he might be crying. Silna gasps again when he rubs, just the tiniest amount. He drags his fingers downwards, parting her, over one hole and then to another. "This is the vaginal opening," he says with slightly more confidence. "This is—well, this is it. I can. Show you."

"Please," Silna says.

She writhes when he inserts a finger, slipping inside easily up to his knuckle. She squeezes her muscles around him and finds that she both welcomes the intrusion and aches for something larger. She opens her eyes then and grabs at him, first just to touch him, anywhere, grabbing a shoulder, a forearm, and then to get to that bulge between his legs.

"On men?" she asks, between breaths.

He withdraws his finger from her, then brings his shaking hands to the buttons on his pants. "Are you sure?" he asks her, through fat lips and with fat pupils, but nonetheless serious.

"Yes," Silna says, nodding. Her hands ghost around the muscles on his sides as he undoes his pants, pushing them and the ones he wears beneath them down. He reveals himself: blunt, dimpled at the tip, red as fire. She stares without shame; it curves upwards, just slightly; coarse hair like that on his chest covers the base and the stones beneath; a slight dampness leaks from a slit at the end. She has never seen a man flush with arousal, never allowed herself to want to, but this is  _Harry_ , before her, showing her his body, at once strange and familiar, the most appetizing sight she has ever seen. "This is—the penis. More, ah, colloquially known as a  _cock_."

"Cock," Silna says, repeating it. She likes the way her mouth as to open around the word; it gives her ideas for a future date.

"Oh, Christ," Harry says, knocking his head back. The bare of his neck makes Silna want to bite him. "Hearing you say that word, Silna—Christ—"

"How do I make you feel good?" Silna asks, which gets his attention on her again, and her hands moving southward. The tight muscles in his lower belly, the tangling dark hair. "Like you make me feel?"

"Just—like this." Harry takes her dominant hand and brings it to his cock, wrapping his fingers around her so that they enclose over the width of it. Silna has, of course, some preexisting knowledge of this body part, but never in this context. The skin feels like any other skin, but warm and deliciously solid, beating with heat and pleasure beneath her hands. Harry drags her closed palm up and down beneath him, slow at first, and then faster. "This is how," he says. He falls forward, propping himself above her with his free hand. Silna continues to jerk him as he lets his hand go, finding its way back to her opening, this time sliding two fingers in and placing a thumb over her clit.

"This is heavenly," he says, speaking into her cheek. She rolls her head and finds his mouth, kissing him in short pecks, too focused on what's going on below for anything more.

"Harry?" she asks, when he starts thrusting into her hand and she can feel herself tightening into what must be an inevitable release.

"Yes, my love?" he asks, seeming once more as if she's woken him from a dream.

"Show me," she says again. "The whole thing." She uses as simple as vocabulary in her language as she can, as not to confuse nor overwhelm him. He does not yet know their word for  _sex_ , and though she began this with the disguise of the dictionary, she could care less about the damned thing now with her wetness sliding down her thighs and her hand on his throbbing cock. They'll talk about it later. Talk about so many things later. For now, action.

"The whole thing?" he asks, pulling his head back a little so that she can see the perplexment on his face. "You mean—you want me—inside you?"

"Yes." Silna guides his cock, gently, until the head of the thing juts up against where his fingers are. He pulls them out, getting the hint, and once more covers her hand.

"And you are certain?"

"Yes," Silna says again.

He nods, his eyebrows pinched. He inhales unevenly, then exhales with a small chuckle. He shakes beneath her, but just slightly, with that nervous arousal that she so has learned she so dearly loves and wants to draw from him. "I must say, this is not what doctors do. Good ones, in any measure."

Silna laughs at that, and then feels pesky tears prick at the corner of her eyes—she never imagined she would have this, never imagined she would be laughing when it happened, never imagined it would be with somebody as strange and beautiful as Harry Goodsir, with his large, gentle hands, beautiful eyes, body coated with the most luxurious of hair. She lets her hand fall away as he guides himself in, so slow. She feels every fraction of the insertion, feels herself stretched and filled, feels that white sheet of pleasure drape itself over their bodies. She grabs him around the back and pulls him so they're chest-to-chest, her head finding a crook between his neck and shoulder, her eyes closing. One heartbeat, she thinks. Their pulses connected like this—they must share one heartbeat.

And then he begins to thrust—slowly, at first, but more quickly and with more intent as she begins to gasp and grapple at his shoulders, finding purchase. With their pants around their knees she finds she can't stretch as far as she would like, accommodate him as much as she would prefer, but their bodies slotting together the way they do provides her with enough friction between her clit and her sex that she can feel the pleasure rising once again, towards that eventual release. It hits her like the way ice break, a series of popping that seem random and yet so intense, her muscles contracting without her permission but in a beautiful and blind combination. Harry moans into her hair, one of his hands snaking between their bodies so he can grab one of her breasts. It only serves to prolong her pleasure as he finally  _squeezes_ , hard, rough, large, capable hands covering her breast entirely, her nipple rocking between his fingers. She bites into his neck, driven by the desire to feel more at one with him and to try and come back down to this world, and that seems to do it for him—he jerks a few times, sharply and out of rhythm, and she feels a rich rush as he arches further inside her.

She brushes the sweaty curls back from his skin as he falls atop her, panting against her forehead. So warm and wet, everything is; the opposite of the cold, dry landscape that forms her world, and yet she has never wanted anything so much.

"Thank you," she says, as Harry moves his hips back so that he may pull his spent cock out of her. With it comes another rush, this time a little less pleasant, as his seed streams down her legs.

"Thank  _me_?" Harry says, looking up at her with eyes as wide as a child experiencing their first wonder. "Thank  _you_."

"I learned much. And—" she plays with one of his curls, wrapping it between her fingers, "I love you."

Harry says nothing in response, just pulls her tighter. Silna finds she wants to sleep, to slide into a different kind of bliss with Harry by her side. For a moment, she forgets that they must hurry to get dressed again, already having stretched the limits of their thought arrangement in this encounter; for a moment, she forgets the utter grimness of the situation, and the impossibility she encounters at every side when she tries to find a resolution; she forgets anything and everything except the rise and fall of Harry's chest, the gentle breeze of his breath against her skin, the feel of the smooth, sprung curls against the little valleys between her fingers. She starts to hum, a song vaguely remembered from childhood, one about the light on the ice over the families asleep and nestled together. Harry sighs, nestles against her even more firmly.

When the tears return, she accepts them.


End file.
